Just a Dream
by Ookami-Papillon
Summary: A bad dream wakes the young Kazekage. GaaNeji drabble. Spoilers for chapter 614.


**TITLE:** Just a Dream

**SUMMARY:** A bad dream wakes the young Kazekage. GaaNeji drabble. Spoilers for chapter 614.

**NOTES:** It came out rather disjointed but Neji's dead and everything hurts. Never had to add a spoiler warning before.

–

"_Because… I was called a genius…"_

_And his heartbeat stopped in Naruto's arms._

"No" -gasped out with a breath in- "Neji," Gaara breathed out, hot and sticky and choking on tears. He tried to breathe. Even without Suna's humid air, it was hard. He collapsed against the headboard, panting. "Neji," He said again, voice cracking, not wanting to move, not wanting to _think_-

"Mm. What?" Neji rasped out, roused from sleep and looking half-awake.

"Neji," Gaara gasped out again, but this time in relief, a smile breaking out even though his forehead was still wrinkled in pain. Immediately, he grabbed the other man tight around his bare shoulders and kissed him, hard. Lips pressed hard against each other, Neji kept patting at his arms, mumbling, trying to figure out what was wrong, but Gaara didn't give for a few long minutes yet.

When he did, Neji let out a deep breath, trying to smooth out his breathing, looking at his husband of two months with confusion stamped across his brow.

"Love," He said, sounding indignant, "As much as I _don't_ mind being kissed so ravishingly the moment I wake up, it's… two in the morning or so and you look like you've run five miles at midday. What's the matter?" He pressed, face gentle as he inched closer and leaned against the not-quite-alright-again redhead.

Idly, he snapped the thick waistband of the thin track pants Neji slept in. Despite now living in the desert, he wouldn't take to the Sunan custom of sleeping nude.

"… Won't bare your flesh to the Ole Lukoie," Gaara muttered stubbornly.

Neji rolled his eyes, reclining against the younger man easily. Despite Neji being taller when they had started dating, Gaara had grown into the large, wide-shouldered frame of a traditional Sunan man, while Neji was slimmer, more streamline and agile, like Hyuuga tended to be.

"I'm not getting naked in this bloody country's freezing cold night so some little imp can open an umbrella over my head," Neji retorted, reaching a hand over his shoulder to rub one of Gaara's shoulders. "… Did you have a frightening dream?"

"Lukoie would open his blank one on your head," Gaara said back, childishly, "Where you not have any dreams at all."

"Gaara," Neji said, raising an eyebrow.

Gaara ignored him, taking him around his middle and pulling the other man against him. Neji against him, and himself against the headboard. He could feel how warm Neji was, feel him breathing, and it made him feel a bit better. "And Lukoie, he will have his nice umbrella," Gaara said, but didn't bother to finish the sentence.

Neji shifted so that he was on his stomach, and rested his chin on the backs of his hands, pressed just under Gaara's collarbone. "… Was it a very scary dream?" Neji asked again, but the dream was fading now, becoming less real as the moments wore on, and Gaara was breathing normally again.

He took a deep breath and let it out again, and the dream was more and more nothing, just a memory of an awful feeling.

"… Was silly," He said, and felt himself flush in embarrassment at waking up his Neji.

Neji smiled his lovely, handsome smile, though, and chuckled, touching at Gaara's ears with cool fingers, and Gaara smiled too.

"Sorry," He said sheepishly, and Neji wiggled up to give him a light kiss.

"It's alright," He whispered. "I'm here. I'll give you kisses when you have bad dreams," He promised, and Gaara laughed. "You sure you don't need… soothing?" Neji asked, his eyebrow raised with far different intentions now, and Gaara grinned.

"No, am fine," He assured him, but he didn't expect that to matter.

As he thought, Neji rolled up onto his hands and knees, baring down over Gaara and planting kisses where he could, as Gaara twisted back and forth and laughed, covering his face with his arms as Neji kept mumbling;

"Well- I'm all worked up now- I want to play- won't tell me what your dream was- tells me to take my clothes off-"

"For Lukoie!" Gaara reminded him, almost cackling, and dodged an attempt to grab his face and pull it up to kiss.

"Rrah!" Neji huffed out, trapping Gaara in with a hand on either side of his head, on his hands and knees over top of his husband.

Gaara just covered his face with his forearms again.

Teasing, Neji started to murmur; "Aww, has my Kazekage-sama abandoned me? Has he left me for the cold? What if I were to, ahh, 'bare my flesh' now, hmm…?" Gaara steeled himself, and-

Some of his dream promptly flashed back and ruined it. Gaara was up immediately, his arms tight around Neji as he pressed a hard kiss into his shoulder.

"… Gaara?" Neji prompted, reading the mood quickly. "What's wrong?"

"I thought you dead," He whispered. "I dreamed you died for another man. I dreamed you _died_…" Gaara rested his heated forehead against Neji's neck, brow crinkled. "It was an awful dream."

"Hush," Neji whispered, coxing Gaara to lay back down, and then reclining beside him, hugging his close again. "That's absurd, and a terrible dream." Gaara nodded. "Who was this other man, anyway? My uncle?"

Gaara frowned. That was logical; his dream was not. "No. It was Naruto."

Neji laughed, rather mean. "I'm sure! How stupid. I don't think that idiot little boy _can_ die; in fact, I think he exists just to piss me off," Neji sniffed. Before their marriage, Neji had been in charge of Uchiha Sasuke while he was rehabilitated; then Naruto married the deemed-safe Sasuke just as Neji had gotten attached. Sasuke still wrote letters to his 'Neji-nii'.

Gaara smiled regardless of tone. "Yes. Stupid."

Neji looked challengingly at that. "What? Your dream or Naruto?"

"Both," He answered nonchalantly, and Neji laughed again, though nicer.

"Yes," He said simply, and soothed Gaara's hold, pushing the redhead onto his back and then fitting nicely to his side, sprawling an arm out over his chest to hold his other hand. "… I can count the people I'd die for on one hand," Neji murmured, in the tone he used to lull Gaara to sleep. "You, my uncle, Hanabi-sama, maybe Hinata…" Gaara chuckled at that. "I wouldn't need to die for Naruto. If anything, we'd have to stop his dying for _us_."

Gaara recalled that time. Kyuubi chakra unleashed, red bleeding everywhere and into everyone, fuelling them as the boy roared _"I WILL NOT LET YOU KILL MY FRIENDS! I WILL NOT LET YOU TAKE THEIR KIND, LOVING BONDS FROM ME! THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO LOVE ME; THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO BE MY FRIENDS BUT THEY DID AND __**YOU WILL NOT TAKE THEM FROM ME!**__"_

Gaara remembered afterward, after everyone was safe and their enemy dead and gone for good, slapping that stupid, insufferable boy and roaring _"WHY?!"_ He could still see Naruto's grim little smile.

"_They didn't have to love us. They didn't have to cherish our friendship, because they didn't need it like we did. It was not vital to them, to love us, as it is for us, now was it? But they do!"_ The boy had started to cry then, so happy, so glad he was. _"Oh Gaara, my brother, we are loved! By people who are alive! Living people love us, oh Gaara! To die! For them!? To die for them would be an honour!"_ He remembered how that boy had shouted those words out, so pleased and thankful and grateful for his lot. He could still understand it, even now.

Gaara was brought from those painful times with a soft sigh. Neji was settling back to sleep. "… I'd die for you, love," Gaara whispered, and was just in time to make his husband smile before he slept. _'I hope Lukoie has dreams of us for you,'_ He found himself thinking, before he dozed off as well.


End file.
